12:40 PM on Tue Jul 8 2008
By Charlie Jane Anders
2,321 views
46 comments
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Comments CPU at 12:57 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
I'll wait for the "uncut" 13.6 million word version.
rhorsman at 12:57 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
awful movie Last Year At Marienbad
You misspelled "awesome."
Plague at 01:02 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email * Connectedness Index: 54
@rhorsman:
I know!
I read that and said "what the hell?"
tollwaytroll at 01:08 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
There's a sentence that is 3 million words long? Being a sentence that takes up one fourth of the narrative?
Think I'll pass.
crashedpc at 01:13 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
[marienbadmylove.com]
I was hoping for a little light reading to occupy me for the rest of the year. But now I have no idea who's going to read this. Seriously, part 17A-F is the longest sentence ever, but it's mostly rambling and hard to focus on after, oh, say, page 300.
Part 19A-D is the part where the name of the Supreme Deity is written... literally like 500 pages of just the same text being repeated again and again. I'm not sure if that's considered cheating when it comes to word count. Wait, not word count, character count. It's just one word, after all.
I'm probably not sophisticated enough to understand his work.
Jason1749 at 01:17 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
You know, when I was in college and had the late-shift at the campus radio station, the janitor would spend time in the recording booth after he was done working and record "his" version of the bible, word-for-word.
I wonder if the author of this book and that guy are related? They seem to be operating on the same wave-length of crazy.
Garrison Dean, Mr.... at 01:17 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email * Connectedness Index: 140
Creating a 4 million letter long sentence to make a book longer is cheating, out and out. It's like, you know, when in school which was a really really really really boring place and your teacher made you write very very very very stupid assignments and she said that they had to be at least 100 words so you had to be super hyper big time full of baloney to try to craaaaaaam it full of enough words and words and words and numerous short cuts in order to reach the 100 word mark on something that you knew absolutely positively truly nothing about because you did a very very tiny tiny amount of research on it because you wanted to watch TV.
And then I woke up.
DSTRYA at 01:25 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@Plague: @rhorsman: WORD UP. anybody who describes Marienbad as such and mashes Hiroshima, mon amour into the title to be snarky gets a big FAIL.
Dunny0 at 01:30 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@Garrison Dean, King Awesome: 128 words? I think you can do better - see me after class.
icelight at 01:33 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@tollwaytroll: Not only that, but a 4.4 million character word sounds like someone fell asleep with their face on the keyboard (or left their cat on it for a few days) and didn't feel like deleting any of it. Honestly, not really that attractive of a proposition.
Tim Faulkner at 01:33 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@Garrison Dean, King Awesome: "Creating a 4 million letter long sentence to make a book longer is cheating, out and out."
Cheating himself actually. That's one word when it could have been a few hundred thousand words easily.
Of course, there have been many a sufferer of graphomania more prolific than Proust, but putting out a press release doesn't make the product of that mania cogent enough to unseat In Search of Lost Time in any sane man's mind.
lazyeight at 01:43 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@rhorsman: @Plague: I feel like I'm losing my mind. I reread & reread the post and the closest I could come to the quote was 'world's worst films, Last Year at Marienbad'.
"Things come and go so quickly around here" - Alice
russdanger at 01:47 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
Free download, huh?
I'm waiting for a better deal...If it were a real book I could use it to heat my home this coming winter...
Did someone actually count the words in the three million word sentence, or was this an estimate based on acreage?
DrJimmy at 01:48 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
Leach and his heirs can scream as loud as they want, I'm not gonna pay royalties by the word.
Tim Faulkner at 01:48 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@rhorsman: @Plague: @lazyeight: Have no fear. Much of this post is cut and pasted from the nutbag himself, not Charlie's own views (I hope):
"Panned as one of the worst movies of all time, "Next Year at Marienbad" would seem to offer little of interest to the serious cinemaphile. It is informally plain and barely viewable. The linear time is scrambled in a world where people appear trapped in a shadowy place beyond the outer marker of reality."
Of course, thankfully, he's saved us the trouble and self-diagnosed himself as suffering from post modern prophet disorder.
[marienbadmylove.com]
willentrekin at 01:56 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
"Longest" being no actual signifier toward quality. Any of the words actually any good? Because it doesn't sound that way.
Smeagol92055 at 01:57 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
Oh, fuck it. I can stop reading Battlefield Earth and read this instead for you guys if you'll all pitch in a buck for the expense, time, and brain cells.
Tim Faulkner at 02:01 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@Tim Faulkner: Funny how Leach deems Harry Medved a more "serious cinemaphile" than the Motion Picture Academy or Venice Film Festival. [en.wikipedia.org]
Smeagol92055 at 02:13 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
OK, well I'm appointing myself official book reviewer for this one, having found the link and downloaded the files.
Anyone want to race me?
Good God, what have I committed myself to?
If I don't make it out alive, I just want you all to know I secretly loved Spiderman 3. There. I said it.
crashedpc at 02:15 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@Smeagol92055:
I didn't make it past the TITLE. I salute your tenaciousness, and I'll make sure that your love for Spiderman 3 memorialized forever on your tombstone.
Dunny0 at 02:18 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@Smeagol92055: Godspeed you crazy bastard!
Smeagol92055 at 02:30 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@Dunny0: *straps on goggles*
I don't need luck... I've got PATRIOTISM! HOOOOOO!!!!
[io9.com]
Charlie Jane Anders at 02:36 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email * Connectedness Index: 235
@Tim Faulkner: Yeah, I have never seen Last Night At Marienbad and have only vaguely read about it... but Leach is very emphatic that it's a terrible movie.
crashedpc at 02:37 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@crashedpc:
IS memorialized. Two comments to my name... not off to a good start.
Tim Faulkner at 02:46 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@Charlie Jane Anders: If you've read Robbe-Grillet's The Erasers (or any of his novels for that matter) and liked them... if you can appreciate some French cinema under some circumstances, Marienbad is at least a hundred times better than Alphaville (ducks) and certainly no worse than many a highly-lauded French film.
Charlie Jane Anders at 02:48 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email * Connectedness Index: 235
@Smeagol92055: Thanks for your dedication to the cause of literature. Definitely email me when you've read and reviewed it! But remember, no skimming!
Jay042 at 02:48 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@Smeagol92055: I'm tempted to read it too. But I think I'll wait on your appraisal first
Tim Faulkner at 02:56 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@Charlie Jane Anders: @Charlie Jane Anders: "...but Leach is very emphatic that it's a terrible movie."
He also thinks linking to word docs on the Internet makes him published.
I Think We're Property at 03:03 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
I'm glad that there are always people ready and willing to once again demonstrate for the world that just because something is obtuse, pretentious, and unpopular, does not necessarily mean that it is art.
Jay042 at 03:11 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@Tim Faulkner: He also thinks linking to word docs on the Internet makes him published.
I noticed that too. You'd think he'd at least make it html or a PDF file...
Evil Tortie's Mom at 03:14 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@Smeagol92055: Smeagol: He reads shit so we don't have to.
I both pity and admire you.
Smeagol92055 at 03:14 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@Charlie Jane Anders: Oh, no skimming whatsoever. Well, maybe except for that 4-million letter word. Honestly. Who makes a 4-million letter word?
It's so insane, I'm tempted to actually read it and figure out how to phonetically prounounce it.
And then put it on a T-shirt!
RemusShepherd at 03:14 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
Hey, @Smeagol92055, while you're reading it, mind recording me an audio version? ;)
Cacafuego at 03:16 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@I Think We're Property:
Amen to that.
I was working in a Waldenbooks in the 1980s when this confused looking fellow came up to me with a copy of DIANETICS and asked me if he was missing something. He'd read it and it just didn't make any sense to him. I said, no, you're okay, the book isn't. Since the district manager at the time was a $cientologist (they infilitrated the heirachy of Waldenbooks pretty badly back then, fyi), I was taking something of a risk telling the poor fellow that he wasn't too stupid to understand the book--he wasn't stupid enough.
Smeagol92055 at 03:17 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@Evil Tortie's Mom: On second thought, I'm putting that on a T-shirt.
Smeagol92055 at 03:18 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@RemusShepherd: As soon as I figure out how to pronounce that "god within" part. :p
Smeagol92055 at 04:19 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
My God... I just finished reading the synopsis over at the website. My eyes hurt with the awfulness that is this thing's plot.
Tim Faulkner at 04:27 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@Smeagol92055: Too late, you've committed. See you in a few months... or years.
kosure at 06:00 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
I've got to point to Henry Darger's manuscript for "The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion". I don't know how many words it's got, but at 15,145 pages long, it's got to be a contender for the title.
Tim Faulkner at 06:41 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@kosure: It's mostly illustrations.
Evil Tortie's Mom at 07:42 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@Smeagol92055: It would fit a lot better.
But can it be a true classic if the hero never says "Mrifk!"?
Pegritz at 09:56 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
Uhhhhh, yeah. Quantity != Quality. Even the synopsis alone is complete shit. Welcome to the world's largest Complete Waste of Time. At least _Finnegans Wake_ has finally been dethroned.
Tannhauser23 at 10:01 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
Somebody put the god's name into Microsoft Sam!
daydalus at 08:01 AM on 07/09/08 Reply by Email *
I'm willing to bet he generated the text with some sort of Markov chain. I read about a half page of part 16 and you can see where the grammer doesn't match up (switching tenses, mismatched subject/object, etc) - classic output of a Markov generated text. Definitly cheating in my book.
Check it out: [www.beetleinabox.com]
"Oh holy one of subways, all house flesh, old Strangers Rest stretches the lamps, insects and nocturnal and clear, throwing off carnivorous aquatic insects swimming down to the underworld to crumbling failure somewhere near feral cat stalks its shadow, in the east, a funeral urns and metal shipping name of the holy being, who the screams and the you still use the same holy one, and I couldn't you write any better the kings of the containers, glowing glass transistors a ruined wall marked filled his celestial robot from the by a winged demon, transforming from the forbidden fruit, cables and flesh-coated wheels and ominous rumblings escape and that dark was it's me, my reflection caught silently above the marshes and heart pulsing in the ghost units, wreckage of first giant tongue in the sky went and they did not repent and sun shone fuller and fuller the president of Uruguay, a radio torn from the leave, go down to the giant tongue in the sky filled his celestial robot from places"
Smeagol92055 at 08:31 AM on 07/09/08 Reply by Email *
@daydalus: Yeah. Did you read the title? It was like 60 pages of that.
willentrekin at 04:10 PM on 07/10/08 Reply by Email *
Anyone looking for a better book in fewer pages, btw, is welcome to check out mine:
http://stores.lulu.com/willentrekin And it's free!
http://io9.com/5023076/thrill+crazed-space-bugs-swarm-through-worlds-longest-novel